This article should be noted by people who need to start recognizing actual lies told by people who know they're lying:

[Judi Lynn]

If it's not 100% obvious to you, it's time to get busy and realize it's all total crap. You need to look for the truth, which most of us learned is much harder to see, concerning Latin America and what is passing as "news" in the corporate media all these long, long years. No time like the present.



Squad members Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal called 'communist sympathizers' and 'anti-American' for their secret trip to Cuba and bid for regime to be taken OFF state-sponsored terror list

By JON MICHAEL RAASCH, POLITICAL REPORTER IN WASHINGTON, D.C., FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 17:30 EST, 1 March 2024 | UPDATED: 17:30 EST, 1 March 2024'


Following a secretive visit to communist Cuba, two top progressive 'Squad' members are catching flak for being anti-American.

Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., the top two leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, made an unpublicized trip to the Caribbean island in February while the House was in recess.

The congresswomen, who are longstanding critics of the U.S. embargo on the island nation, said they were there to 'meet with people from across Cuban civil society.'

. . .'

The progressive lawmakers led a delegation of about a dozen people including a staffer from the office of California Rep Barbara Lee's office, the Miami Herald reported.

A spokeswoman for the 100-strong Congressional Progressive Caucus gave a brief explanation for the visit by its chair and deputy chair.

'Representatives Jayapal and Omar traveled to Cuba last week, where they met with people from across Cuban civil society and government officials to discuss human rights and the US-Cuba bilateral relationship,' she said.

There are strict restrictions on travel to the island which was placed back on the list of state sponsors of terror by President Trump in January 2021.

More:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13147163/squad-ilhan-omar-pramila-jayapal-secret-cuba-trip-critcism.html


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The reactionary hard right has been bellowing this same package of pure BS since the beginning of the 1960's, without taking a breath, even though the rest of the world believes the US should drop the hostilities immediately, and has said so for decades.

As a former Head of the US Interests Section in Havana, Wayne S. Smith said,

“Cuba seems to have the same effect on American administrations that the full moon once had on werewolves.”

I have NEVER supported the right wing filthy war on this tiny island as anyone knows who's attended the same message boards I have, starting in 1999 with CNN's message board system at the time, the Miami Herald, etc., etc., etc.

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Here's a more responsible article, written by the Jimmy Carter US Interests Section Head in Havana, Wayne Smith:

Bush and Cuba: Still the Full Moon

Wayne S. Smith
September 25, 2007

If I am remembered at all (which isn’t likely), it will probably be for having said in my first op-ed piece in the New York Times after leaving the U.S. Foreign Service back in 1982 that “Cuba seems to have the same effect on American administrations that the full moon once had on werewolves.” Twenty-two years later, that is unchanged. Indeed, as one analyzes the Bush administration’s policies toward Cuba, one imagines a distant (and distinctly irrational) howling!

The cold war is long since over. Our own Pentagon acknowledges that Cuba poses no threat whatsoever to U.S. security. There is no evidence that Cuba is or has been in any way involved with terrorist efforts against the United States. On the contrary, Castro has offered to cooperate fully in the fight against terrorism and even proposed signing agreements to that effect with the United States. But none of that has softened Bush’s approach one bit. Instead, his is the harshest policy yet against the island nation. Bush indeed seems to have entered the White House with the intention of getting rid of the Castro regime, not to negotiate with it or to reach some modus vivendi. As Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega put it to Congress on October 2 last year: “The President is determined to see the end of the Castro regime and the dismantling of the apparatus that has kept him in office for so long.”

This past January, Bush closed all channels for dialogue, even suspending the twice-yearly migration talks. He also appointed a Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba to recommend ways, first, of bringing about “an expeditious end of the dictatorship,” and then to develop a plan for assisting the Cuban people in “a post-dictatorship Cuba.”

For 45 years now, Washington has used pressure and threats against Castro. The embargo has been in place for 44 years, travel controls of one kind or another almost as long. So now Bush simply proposes more of the same, only in strengthened doses.

The first thing that must be said is that it won’t work. It takes us in exactly the wrong direction. There is a hard-and-fast rule that no U.S. administration has understood (or at least accepted): the more we threaten and pressure, the more we try to choke Cuba economically, the more defensive will be the reaction of the Cuban government, and the more it will call for greater internal discipline and for all to rally around the flag against the threat from the Colossus of the North. In other words, it leads not to liberalization but to tighter internal controls. We must remember that since at least 1902, when the Platt Amendment turned Cuba into a U.S. protectorate, Cubans have seen the United States as the principal threat to their sovereignty and independence. They react to our policies accordingly.

More:
https://nacla.org/article/bush-and-cuba-still-full-moon